Is Poplar a Dumb Buy?

[Steve H Graham]

I'm wondering if I just wasted some money.

I want to make a shelfy thing for the headstock of my metal lathe, to hold a chuck and some tools. Hardwood would be nice, but it's really expensive. I figured pine would do.

I went to look at wood, and I saw that poplar was not too much more expensive than pine, so I bought a $20 board. Then I got home and looked it up. Apparently, it's softer than pine, and it is hard to see what the advantages are, apart from having fewer knots. It's pretty ugly.

Was I a fool to buy this board, and will I weep bitter tears of regret?

Now I feel like I need to put something on it as a protective layer to resist dents. A lathe chuck that probably weighs 75 pounds will sit on it. I'm not sure what to use. It would have to be something thin, hard, cheap, and easy to attach. Maybe no such product exists.

Other relatively cheap materials available here are pine, fir, spruce, and western cedar. The spruce looked pretty good. I can use the poplar for the top shelf, which will not hold heavy items. That would allow me to use something else to hold the chuck.

[David Ragan]

It doesn't sound like you wasted your $20-save your bitter tears for another episode of buyer's remorse.

Poplar is rather ugly. and soft.

I think it blotches, too. But-who would stain it?

[Steve H Graham]

I was thinking I would cover the resulting product with some kind of super thick coating. Maybe truck bed paint.

[Scott DelPorte]

I've always thought of poplar as being a bit more dent resistant than pine. I would just use your poplar board and not worry about it.

[Frederick Skelly]

I would just use your poplar board and not worry about it.

+1. My saw till is poplar. I don't care if it gets dinged up - it's a shop accessory, not fine furniture. Likewise, I use 1/2" or 3/4" plywood all over the place in the shop. It's sturdy and looks good enough if I buy a decent grade.

[Tom Ewell]

Don't know if I'd use poplar for heavy shelving, I usually use plywood for shop shelves but don't be afraid to use it for another project.
Think you'll find a decent piece of poplar can finish nicely with blotch controls/dyes/stains/clear coats as well as paint grade work.

http://walzcraft.com/cordovan-w-14-36913/
http://classiccabs.com/Poplar%20Value%20Line.htm

[Lee Schierer]

Poplar is a hardwood, but is softer than yellow pine. It is significantly harder than white pine. It is an easy working wood that is great for frames or pieces that are to be painted.

Make your shelf, finish it with your favorite polyurethane or paint and enjoy your creation. It will last a lifetime with reasonable care.

[Larry Edgerton]

You are underestimating poplar.

These are poplar.. http://crookedtreejoinery.com/?page_id=38

[Jim Dwight]

For utility uses like this, poplar is a good choice. While yellow pine may be harder, most "pine" you look at is just generic softwood. Many are softer than poplar. Spruce is very soft, for instance. In furniture, poplar is used for things like drawers. It machines well, sands well and is generally well behaved. It's coloring varies from white to green to black which may be off-putting for some. I would rather use it than softwood. I kind of like yellow pine but it's dark yellow grain is hard but the whiter wood inbetween is not. So if you sand it with a soft pad, you will dig out the soft areas a little. But yellow pine smells great when you cut it and is strong and the grain is interesting. All wood species have pluses and minuses.

[Roger Pozzi]

What Larry said. Too many "purists" give poplar a bad rap, when in reality, it has many uses.

[Bill Orbine]

A lot of furniture store are selling furniture that might say "cherry finish". You might be under the impression you are looking at cherry, but look closer.....it might be poplar. Poplar is good wood for many uses including fooling the untrained eye!

[Jay Jolliffe]

I use poplar all the time if what I'm making get's painted. It is harder than white pine as already said. Poplar is one of the only woods that takes stain really well. I made some poplar cabinet doors & stained them to look like cherry & it would be hard to tell them apart....I trimmed out my house on the interior with poplar & painted it. I used one piece of pine because I ran out & wanted to finish. It's the only piece of wood that has sap streaks the came through the paint. As far as a shelf I use it in 5/4 plenty strong enough as long as it's not a really long run 4-5 is about it.

[Al Launier]

Go Poplar!!!

[Tom M King]

Poplar is often my first choice when it's going to be painted. It's stable, and "takes paint well".

[Peter Quinn]

I use poplar all the time. the work bench I beat on daily at work is primarily made of poplar, the bench I beat at my last job for 10 years was poplar, half the interior doors in my own house are made of poplar. Its not as hard as southern yellow pine, but its not a sticky pitchy unstable mess either. Can you imagine making drawer sides out of SYP? They might never open again! Poplar was often traditionally used for drawer parts, secondary wood in very fine furniture, even case parts in lower grade work. I'd probably take SYP over poplar for a floor or stair tread, maybe a bench top, but for almost anything else I'd rather work with poplar. So put me in the "poplar's not a bad deal" camp.

As far as a shelf to hold a heavy metal object, short of IPE or lignum vitae, most species are going to dent under the pressure of heavy steel. I don't like dents in my furniture in the house, so I don't keep lathe chucks on the end tables in the living room. In the shop I could care less about dents. If you do perhaps a sacrificial replaceable layer on the top might make sense, like a piece of 1/8" hard board. You could wrap a lip around the shelf to keep round things in place, then line the thing with a thin replaceable layer. In my mind when two things meet you have to decide which is the more important and make the other one softer. Better the shelf dents than the chuck. My vice jaws are lined with poplar, some use white pine, just because its very soft so its unlikely to dent the more important stuff its meant to touch.

[Brian Kent]

I just made a dozen communion sets out of poplar. It is easy to tool, takes shellac and WOP just fine, and is beautiful with the light green areas.

[Paul Cahill]

I use poplar as my main secondary wood. I buy it in bulk, rough cut, 2 x 12 or 16, and just work my way through it. I find it very stable with almost no knots, and I like working it - cutting, milling etc. I use for drawers, braces, shelving, etc. If I care about the appearance, I leave in the sun for a few hours and it turns a lovey brown that I finish with shellac - otherwise it does have a sickly green hue. Writing this reminds me I need to get another load...................

Paul

[glenn bradley]

I used poplar for the base for my new workbench. Dad's poplar lumber rack has seen years of service without incident. Neither of these is designed to remain dent-free but, a 75lb lathe chuck could do a number on a much harder material, eh? I commonly just flood poplar with BLO and wipe off the excess. Once cured (a couple of weeks) I will paste wax the surface so sawdust and curlies don't cling.

As mentioned, poplar is harder than white pine, softer than southern yellow pine but, SYP is also harder than cypress which is often used for outdoor benches and so forth. I wouldn't over think it. If you want to protect some parts of the surface, lay down a silicone pad or scrap of linoleum :).

[Larry Fox]

Poplar is an outstanding secondary wood and primary if it is to be finished with an opaque finish. I buy and use a lot of it and "I wish I had another poplar board" is an oft repeated phrase in my shop because it has a lot of utility. For shop stuff like you are describing I will use almost anything but poplar or good plywood are my preferred choices.

[Peter Kelly]

Poplar is fine for painted pieces, just don't use it for anything outdoors. Even with a coating it'll typically decay much faster than softwoods.

[James Gunning]

Steve,

The shelves near my metal lathe that hold the extra chucks and other heavy metal stuff, happen to be plywood with just a coat or two of poly on them. The poplar would work just fine for the same duty. It will get beaten up a bit, but the slightly soft surface is what you want to put precision machined parts on anyway. I would just give the poplar or whatever you use a coat or two of finish to resist the oily bits.

[Steve H Graham]

Now I have a new problem. I glued several pieces side-by-side to make board 16" wide, and then I realized I can't get them through the planer! I guess I'll find out whether my hand plane technique has reached the point where I can get rid of a glue line.

I didn't have anything suitable for use as a caul, so there are a couple of tiny ridges where the boards meet.

[Buck Williams]

Now I have a new problem. I glued several pieces side-by-side to make board 16" wide, and then I realized I can't get them through the planer! I guess I'll find out whether my hand plane technique has reached the point where I can get rid of a glue line.

I didn't have anything suitable for use as a caul, so there are a couple of tiny ridges where the boards meet.

Sounds like a perfect time to get familiar with a cabinet scraper, I wasn't familiar with them until I stared hanging out here, my first use was a real AHAH moment.

[Steve H Graham]

Funny you should mention scrapers. Three weeks ago I finally made a jig for burnishing mine. Some people don't understand the importance of breaking carbide tooling so you always have bits of it handy for projects like this. I'm always careful to break lots of things.

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[Andrew Pitonyak]

I just made a dozen communion sets out of poplar. It is easy to tool, takes shellac and WOP just fine, and is beautiful with the light green areas.

And it is not super heavy, which can be a problem during distribution sometimes...

[johnny means]

You will regret it when your poplar shelf melts like butter and runs all over the floor. You'll feel even worse when it hardens like peanut brittle and shatters into a thousand slivers.

Yours Truly,
Purist

[Dave Cav]

And now there is fake poplar....At least one mill up here is cutting cottonwood and marketing it as "west coast poplar". It's nasty stuff. I have a bunch of it I got cheap for secondary wood, but it's almost as soft as balsa, or seems like it.

[Rich Enders]

If you are concerned about $20 then you better find a different hobby.

[Jeff Ramsey]

I use poplar all the time if what I'm making get's painted. Poplar is one of the only woods that takes stain really well.

Agreed, except for staining. My experience with staining poplar is that it blotches. So I only use poplar for inner construction, like drawer carcasses, or for a paint application anywhere.

[David Ragan]

If you are concerned about $20 then you better find a different hobby.

So true, that is what I meant to say originally.

I am glad to hear that Poplar is so useful. somehow, I wound up with a lot of it.

[Lee Schierer]

Agreed, except for staining. My experience with staining poplar is that it blotches. So I only use poplar for inner construction, like drawer carcasses, or for a paint application anywhere.

Lets be clear here, there are numerous poplar varieties. The wood being used that stains well is Yellow or Tulip poplar.

Poplar species include: Tulip, Cottonwoods, Aspens, Balsum Poplar,and numerous Asian and European varieties.

[Frank Drew]

I'm firmly in the so-what-if-it-dents camp -- this is a shelf in a workshop.

[John T Barker]

Poplar is ideal for what you are thinking of. It is strong and cheap. In this neck of the woods (Pa.) the masters of years back used polar as their secondary and tons of great pieces are polar on the inside, holding together fine. When I'm looking for shop furniture wood I go with ply or poplar or free wood.

Hint: When you have a poplar question ask the Pennsylvania guys. :)

[Larry Fox]

Hint: When you have a poplar question ask the Pennsylvania guys. :)

+1 It is essentially an extremely large weed here - great for shade though. I have one in my front yard that is massive and I had 5-6 that were equally massive removed a few years ago because they were hanging over the house. Even after that my property is still lousy with them.

[Jim Becker]

I went to look at wood, and I saw that poplar was not too much more expensive than pine, so I bought a $20 board. Then I got home and looked it up. Apparently, it's softer than pine, and it is hard to see what the advantages are, apart from having fewer knots. It's pretty ugly.

It sounds like the "poplar" you got isn't the wood (Tulip Poplar) that is heavily used in the furniture industry...the poplar I use (milled off my property) and available in local home centers here, too, is certainly "harder" than pine. I think you got something else for that board... I've used thousands of board feet of poplar (tulip poplar) and have never had an issue with "softness"! It's not oak, but...

[John Broomall]

I think everyone has covered the virtues of poplar. It's great stuff with a lot of uses. As for whether or not you should be upset over the $20 purchase i think it comes down to the size of the board!

[Rich Engelhardt]

As for whether or not you should be upset over the $20 purchase i think it comes down to the size of the board!+1 to that!
No mention of the size of the board was ever made.
Around my parts, I can buy poplar for as little as $1 a board foot. A $20 poplar board would be a good sized chunk of wood!

[Dale Murray]

I use poplar all the time, it is my go to wood for basic functional things such as the edging of my garage work bench and this drawer. It is easy to machine, holds a screw well, inexpensive, and does not look bad in my opinion.
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319782

These drawer pulls and the edging are poplar.

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